Top Titles from the Powell's Small Press Section

Yesterday, Kevin Sampsell, who runs the small press section at Powell's, posted on Facebook a list of the bookstore's bestselling small-press titles in 2013:

1. DIY Guide to Fighting the Big Motherfuckin' Sad by Adam Gnade2. Dream Journals by Melody Owen3. Poetica Scientifica by Leah Noble Davidson4. Monogamy Songs by Gregory Sherl5. Legs Get Led Astray by Chloe Caldwell6. Fast Machine by Elizabeth Ellen7. Disorder by Dan DeWeese8. Glitter in the Blood by Mindy Nettifee9. Bluets by Maggie Nelson10. I Will Never Be Beautiful Enough to Make Us Beautiful Together by Mira Gonzalez11. Sexual Boats by James Gendron12. Crapalachia by Scott McClanahan13. Madness Vase by Andrea Gibson14. We Live Inside You by Jeremy Robert Johnson15. Life Cycle by Dena Rash Guzman

I'm incredibly biased here, because Adam Gnade is a former Mercury Music Editor and someone I personally like very much, but his chapbook The DIY Guide to Fighting the Big Motherfuckin' Sad is one of the more raw and useful things I've read recently, and I'm glad people have been picking it up. It's a practical and heartfelt pamphlet about living a life that doesn't suck, and I wish someone had handed it to me when I was 15. (The Rumpus just wrote about it here.) Adam's also got a new novel out on Pioneer Press, called Caveworld, which you can order here.